A prototype vaccine for Ebola has proven effective in Guinea, according to the World Health Organization. It hopes fast-track approval will emerge by 2018. The hemorrhagic virus killed 11,300 people in western Africa. WHO assistant director-general Marie-Paule Kieny wrote in the medical journal “The Lancet” that an “effective vaccine” for Ebola, dubbed rVSV-ZEBOV should be 80 percent effective in a fully-fledged …

Anis Amri, the chief suspect in Monday’s truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market, has been shot dead by police in Milan. Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti told a news conference on Friday morning that Amri was killed during a shootout with police at 3am. Amri opened fire during a routine check when he was asked for his identity documents …

By Eric Maurice, EUObserver │The EU approved a new Swiss law on Thursday (22 December) that will allow EU citizens to work in Switzerland, opening the way to solve a two-year crisis.
 An EU-Swiss joint committee, where all 28 EU states are represented, said that the law passed last Friday in the Swiss parliament would limit the effect of a …

The Federal Government of Nigeria has approved the payment of 5 per cent of recovered looted fund to the whistle blower behind the recovery. Minister of Finance Kemi Adeosun briefed State House correspondents at the end of the cabinet meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday, 21 December. According to her, the programme is designed to encourage anyone with …

Nigeria plans to close the Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport in the capital Abuja for six weeks from 8 March to repair its runway, the aviation ministry said on Tuesday, 3 January, pushing the move back later than previously scheduled. No reason was given for the change of date. The closure is to allow extensive runway repairs which will last for six …

More details have been released about the man all Europe’s police are now looking for. It appears the main suspect in the Berlin truck attack was previously known to German police, and a 100,000 euro reward is being offered for his capture. He has been identified as Tunisian-born 24-year-old Anis Amri, who had previously served four years in an Italian …

Nigeria’s Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, has announced on Tuesday that the federal government had instructed the Central Bank to eliminate currency black market, where foreign currencies fetch more naira than the official rate. “The CBN has promised to do something by putting a system in place to eliminate the black market because it’s damaging the economy,” Ms Adeosun told a …

German chancellor Angela Merkel has called Monday’s crash at a busy Berlin Christmas market a “terrorist attack”, but she faces criticism from political rivals who are blaming her welcoming refugee policy for the incident. In her first comments after the attack, in which 12 people died and dozens were wounded, Merkel said she was “shocked, shaken and deeply saddened”. But …

The recorded presence of Africans in the territory of today’s Germany can be traced back to the 13th century, when it was fashionable for royal as well as other wealthy households to keep Africans as court servants.  Later waves of Africans from Germany’s colonies – Togo, Cameroon, Southwest Africa (now Namibia) and Tanzania – came between the late 1890s and …

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani reports on the trafficking of young women from Nigeria to Italy which, according to international migration organisations, has significantly increased in the past two years. The report, sponsored by Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change, exposes the intricacies of the sex trade. EDO, …